In recent years attention has been directed by medical personnel and others to muscle and tendon injuries and the like caused by repetitive motion. Often this is brought about in the workplace where continuous repetitive motion is required on an assembly line basis. A person afflicted by such injury suffers pain, discomfort and fatigue. Such injury is not restricted to the assembly line, but can be encountered in any repetitive motion type of activity, including typing on a computer keyboard. Such typing can go on for many hours, without any relief due to necessity of feeding in fresh paper, etc. Indeed, in days of manual typewriters it was necessary to pause at the end of every line, and to operate manually a carriage return. Corrections were made manually, and required pausing, utilizing different muscles.
Repetitive motion of the hands and fingers, whether from a computer, from an assembly line operation, or otherwise requires flexing of the fingers by tendons that run through a structure called the carpal tunnel, a small space between the eight bones of the wrist and the bracelet of ligaments that encircles them. The sensory nerves of the fingers also run through that carpal tunnel. Upon movement of the fingers the tendons slide back and forth beneath the ligament bracelet. Continuous sliding abrades both tendons and ligaments, inflaming them until they press against the nerves that share the tunnel. This causes symptoms including numbness in the fingers and stabs of pain in the wrist that feel like electric shock. Such difficulties have come to be known as "carpal tunnel syndrome" frequently abbreviated as CPS. Related pain symptoms can also be developed in the user's arm or wrist, and are known as "myofascial pain syndrome", also known as MPS. Computer type games also can cause tendonitis and the like.
There are other painful muscular or bodily conditions that can be brought about by leaning one elbow on a table while working, or by leaning a head on one hand while working with the other. Cocking the head to one side, as by holding a telephone to an ear with a shoulder, can develop neck or shoulder pain. Crossed legs while typing can cause muscular or tendon problems.
The present invention is concerned primarily with relief of carpal tunnel syndrome and myofascial pain syndrome as affected by typing on a computer keyboard.